THE deportation of illegal migrants could be challenged in South African courts to prevent what human rights activists described as “the expulsion of HIV-positive foreigners” who do not have access to treatment in their home countries.

Human Rights Watch and three other rights organisations are demanding that foreign nationals living with HIV/AIDS should not be deported to places where they may not get medicine and support.

If successful, the legal challenge will have serious consequences for SA ’s health and social development infrastructure and various departments’ budgets.

The US-based rights group, Deutsche AIDS-Life, the European AIDS Treatment Group and the African HIV Policy Network, are urging the government to reconsider the deportation of people living with HIV/AIDS.

In a report , Returned to Risk: Deportation of HIV-Positive Migrants, they have documented the cases of Basotho and other migrant workers infected with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and often HIV, who face deportation from SA.

In some instances, migrants have been left at the border without any treatment or referral, either by employers, such as mining companies or by the government.

“Such conduct can amount to a death sentence,” the report says.

Human Rights Watch previously reported the deportation of thousands of Zimbabweans, even when medical facilities for those living with HIV in Zimbabwe fell short of requirements.

Home affairs spokeswoman Siobhan McCarthy said the department did not test deportees for HIV, just as they were not tested for diabetes, cancer and other terminal illnesses. Furthermore, being HIV-positive did not mean that a deportee was sick.

“A deportee who is too ill to travel will be hospitalised and given treatment until they can travel.”

SA is home to almost 6- million non-nationals, many of whom are undocumented migrants whose countries of origin have grossly inadequate medical treatment and care. An estimated 5,7-million South Africans are infected with HIV, and 1,8-million are expected to need treatment by 2011.

Head of Wits University’s Forced Migration Studies Programme Loren Landau said there were no data on the number of HIV-positive foreigners fac ing the risk of being deported from SA. Deportations have slowed due to policy shifts towards Zimbabweans, but there are others who are still vulnerable.

Landau said the bigger issue was the denial of healthcare and anti- retrovirals to non-nationals in SA.

“Few people come to SA to get such services but they should be entitled to them. Unfortunately, far too many foreigners and South Africans remain without care,” he said.